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Month: July 2011

As a person with a mental condition that often drastically affects interpersonal relationships, I’m a total pro at apologizing. I do it practically every day. Here’s a sample of depression-related things I’ve apologized for lately:

crying

being too tired to meet up with a friend

being late

leaving early

getting upset when a friend acted insensitively

needing to talk to someone

saying something negative

needing to go be alone for a bit

writing something emotional

being unsure of whether a friend really cares about me or not

not understanding a joke

not being dressed well/not having makeup on

taking criticism too harshly

not wanting to be in a big group of people

not wanting to drink

being quiet

not having an appetite

Now, I realize I should be counting my blessings for the fact that I now have friends who understand me and my brain enough to be able to accept those apologies–in high school it was much worse. But at the same time, I’ve become acutely aware of how inauthentic I’m being when I apologize for the various ways in which my depression manifests itself. Sure, I’m sorry if the way I am makes life difficult for people or makes them uncomfortable. But apologizing implies that I could’ve avoided the situation had I been more attentive or considerate, just like when one apologizes for, say, forgetting a friend’s birthday or for spilling hot coffee on someone.

I can’t avoid being fatigued or upset or sensitive, though, any more than a diabetic can avoid needing insulin shots.

Of course, most people who don’t know me very well don’t even know that I’m depressed. Thankfully, I’m not required to wear a scarlet letter “D” on my shirt. But even if they do know, I feel compelled to apologize every time my behavior deviates from that of a healthy person, just to remind them that I’m well aware of the fact that the way I am can be an inconvenience for people.

The truth is, though, that insofar as “I’m sorry” means “I messed up,” “my bad,” “this is on me,” “I should’ve known better,” “I should’ve tried harder,” “I should’ve been a better person,” and the like–I’m not sorry. It’s not my fault. I couldn’t have stopped it. There’s nothing I could’ve done. I’m getting treatment and trying my best to recover, and that’s as much as I should be held responsible for. I’m not even to blame for not getting treatment sooner, because I was a kid and had no idea there was anything wrong with me. I’d been told “that’s just how you are” all my life.

I wish I could stop apologizing for having an illness. But until people understand it well enough to react to my apologies the way they’d react to an asthma sufferer who apologizes for getting out of breath, I can’t.

Step right up, ladies and gents, see the amazing inhuman hoarders here!

Our culture seems to have three ways of relating to people with mental illnesses–either they’re pathetic losers who need to “snap out of it”, or they’re crazies who need to be locked away (think schizophrenia in popular culture), or they’re here for our pleasure and entertainment. That last one is a relative newcomer, and that’s the one I want to write about here.

Just look at our celebrities–specifically, the ones with substance abuse problems. When it comes to them, it’s all fun and games till someone dies. While the late Amy Winehouse was still alive, blogs and magazines loved to publish photos of her visibly drunk, putting her up for public ridicule. Sure, everyone knew she could use some rehab–she sang about it herself–but there was never an ounce of compassion in how we, as a society, related to her.

And take Charlie Sheen, clearly a troubled individual. I don’t even remember how many days went by that articles making fun of him littered my Google Reader feed. With him, there isn’t even any ambiguity regarding the diagnosis, but he was still treated like a circus animal, and everyone sat back in their seats, made some popcorn, and watched.

Take TV shows like A&E’s Hoarders, Intervention, and Obsessed. These shows literally turn mental illness–and the treatment thereof–into entertainment. You can laugh as the poor OCD sufferer cries when forced to touch a gas pump nozzle with her bare hands, or gag as that creepy hoarder guy reveals his apartment full of old snack wrappers and rotting food.

I’m not saying that it’s wrong to inform people about the lives of those with mental disorders. What I’m saying is that this informing should be done in a compassionate, humanizing way, and reality TV isn’t always the best format for that. For instance, the show In Treatment, which describes a (fictional) therapist and his clients, is a far cry from the carnival sideshow-like feel of the reality shows. I’m not exactly a big fan of reality TV in general, but as a medium for educating the public about mental illness, it’s even worse than usual, because it creates an environment in which people view their fellow human beings as freaks to be gawked at, not as peers to be sympathized with. (A counselor quoted on Everyday Health calls it “exploitanment.”) This happens on virtually every reality show–think how much the people on Jersey Shore and American Idol get made fun of. The difference is that the people on Jersey Shore and American Idol (arguably) do not have a serious mental illness.

Ultimately, all media companies want to provide stuff that sells, and in the case of magazines that publish photos of drunken celebrities (with witty commentary, of course) and TV networks that produce shows putting people with mental disorders up for display, the money’s definitely talking–people love it. But the quality of mental healthcare in the U.S. will never improve while our culture continues to treat people with mental disorders as amusing distractions and not as people.

When I receive comments like this either on this blog, on my Tumblr, on Facebook, or in person, I kind of want to shoot myself in the face.

“Yeah well, I’m [insert group name here] and this doesn’t apply to me.”

I will personally give you $20 if you can find a post on this blog claiming that all x are y. When you’re writing about culture and social science, as I do, a certain amount of generalization is necessary to be able to make a point. I’ve decided not to insult my readers’ intelligence by littering my blog posts with inane truisms like “but of course there is an exception to every rule” and “this may not apply to every individual but” and so on. Apparently, though, people don’t understand this, so I probably need to add a “generalization warning” to the two warnings that I already have.

“That’s just your opinion.”

Gee, brilliant observation, Einstein. This is my blog! Of course it’s just my opinion! I will gladly pay up another $20 if you find a post in which I claim to be the supreme authority on some subject or other.

“Don’t be so judgmental.”

Or what? I’ll be a Bad Person? I never claimed to be a perfect saintly individual who doesn’t judge people. Most people judge people. Granted, most people do not have a blog, so perhaps that’s what sets me apart. In which case, go ahead and state the problem as it really is–I’m a woman, I’m sharing my opinions, and my opinions aren’t always Nice and Kind and Loving. Oh noes!

“Check your privilege.” (and variations thereof)

I’ve already written about this so much that I hardly have anything to add and will simply direct you to this, this, and this.

“I like you better when you aren’t so angry.”

Yeah, and I like the world better when it doesn’t have any problems for me to get angry about. I also like YOU better when you don’t demand constant cheeriness from me. What can I say, we all have our likes and dislikes!

“lol”

I’m sorry, you must’ve gotten lost on the way to your junior high and accidentally ended up on my blog. You should probably get going now.

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When justifying banning burqas or similar Islamic garments, people typically make two points–one, that burqas represent and facilitate the oppression of women, and two, that they pose a security risk.

I’ll address the oppression issue first. Some women do indeed wear burqas because they’ve been pressured into it by their culture or by specific men in their lives. But other women do it out of a genuine desire to observe their religion in that way. Some even see it as an empowering gesture. It is fundamentally unjust to oppress the latter group in the name of protecting the former.

But even if I’m being completely naive, and even if not a single Muslim woman willingly chooses to wear a burqa, I conveniently have a second argument. For those women who are being oppressed by the burqa, would banning it really help? The obvious answer, I should hope, is no. In this case, banning the burqa is the legal equivalent of slapping a band-aid over a knife wound–and of treating the symptoms rather than the disease. The disease being, of course, large-scale societal oppression of women. Not something that can be fixed with a single magical law. To use an analogy that’s even closer to my personal experience, banning burqas to promote feminism is like banning suicide to promote mental health.

Not only would banning it not help, but it would probably backfire. If these women’s husbands or fathers are pressuring them into wearing the burqa, they would probably keep right on doing it despite the new law, thus placing these women in a prime position for facing charges, jail time, or plain ol’ harassment by the police. After all, they would be the ones paying the price for breaking the law, not men.

As for the whole security issue, I don’t have too much to say about that because I’m honestly not an expert on the subject, but I’ll say this–Israel has no burqa ban, or any sort of ban on Islamic head coverings, and yet has an incredible security force that manages to stop virtually all potential terrorists within the country’s borders. They don’t release these statistics to the public, but all the time in the Jerusalem Post, you see another story about security guards catching a would-be terrorist. Maybe the security authorities in these European countries should have a big pow-wow with Israeli ones and see what they’ve been missing.

I think it’s very tempting for people (and governments) to believe that issues like the oppression of women by organized religion can be fixed by something as simple as a law banning burqas. But ultimately, you can never really know what’s going on in someone else’s mind. What looks like oppression to us may not feel that way to the women in question. Or maybe it does. In any case, banning burqas won’t help.

Since most of the people who read this probably know me in person, I can probably assume that you, my reader, know how I look. Specifically, you may have noticed that I’m curvy.

And when I say curvy, I’m not using that as a euphemism for “fat,” because that’s not what I am. I’m curvy. Specifically, I have fairly large boobs and a rather large giant ass.

Despite our society’s idolization of hourglass-shaped women such as Marilyn Monroe and Kim Kardashian (neither of whom I am attempting to compare myself to except where waist-to-hip ratio is concerned), this is not a body type that the American fashion industry tends to keep in mind. According to the clothes you find in virtually any store, be it a Walmart or a Prada, American women come in one shape only–a stick. Sometimes it’s a very thin stick and sometimes it’s a very fat stick, but it’s still a stick.

Jeans, the staple of casual style, are unfortunately no exception. Here’s what happens when you have a big ass and you try to wear jeans. First of all, any size that actually fits around your ass and zips all the way up will generally be way too long for you and much too loose around your actual waist. When you sit down, the back of the jeans rides down and everyone from London to France can see your underpants. Your thighs, if they’re nice and juicy like mine, will be constricted by the jeans and it’ll sometimes hurt to sit. Putting the jeans on and taking them off will be a Herculean effort. Usually, the jeans will be way too tight in general your body will literally spill out of them at the top.

Needless to say, I don’t like jeans very much, and most girls with my proportions don’t either. So if we want to wear jeans like everyone else does, we have two options:

Be really uncomfortable.

Starve ourselves, because that’s the only way to rid a curvy body of its curves.

Needless to say, neither of those options sound particularly appealing. So during the warmer months, we wear lots of skirts and dresses. But fall, winter, and spring pose a problem. Many girls, myself included, prefer to wear leggings because they’re comfortable and stretchy and fit our proportions. Unfortunately, however, many people seem to believe that leggings are “not pants.” Why? Because they’re form-fitting. This has apparently even inspired a Huffington Post article (which, then again, may not be saying much).

What this means is that if you want to wear leggings, you must always choose a top that’s long enough to cover your butt, because God forbid anyone be able to discern the outline of your behind–not that jeans hide it either. However, when you have a large ass, it’s pretty hard to find tops long enough to cover it up completely, meaning that this style is best suited for stick-women, too.

Well, what can I say. I apologize deeply for the fact that my body isn’t of the shape that this particular culture values, and I offer my condolences to anyone who has ever been offended by the sight of the outline of my ass when I wear leggings.

Actually, just kidding. I’m not fucking sorry! This sartorial snobbery is ridiculous. Here’s a quick guide to identifying whether or not something qualifies as clothing. Does it cover up all the body parts that need to be covered up? If yes, then–ding-ding-ding!–it’s clothing.

And if you’re one of these rabid “but but but leggings aren’t pants!” people, then I’d suggest that you issue yourself a stern reminder of the fact that not everyone’s willing to starve to gain the ability to dress themselves in the way you’d like them to.

Still not convinced? Well, find me a pair of jeans that will fit these T&A, and then we’ll talk. 😉

Anyone who’s been at an airport lately probably agrees that those new TSA bodyscans/patdowns suck. One woman, however, apparently reserves some very special wrath for this procedure, because it infuriated her so much that she assaulted a female TSA officer. Not in the usual shoving/punching way, though:

TSA staff said Mihamae refused to be go through passenger screening and became argumentative before she squeezed and twisted the agent’s breast with both hands. Police said Mihamae admitted to the crime and was arrested on a felony count of sexual abuse.

Just in case this isn’t bad enough, there is now some sort of movement to keep Miyamae (that’s the actual spelling of her name; the media outlets got it wrong) from being prosecuted to the full extent of the law. It’s a Facebook page called “Acquit Yukari Mihamae” and it has currently been liked by 4,694 (and rapidly counting) people.

That’s a lot of people who think that physically assaulting someone is a fair response to a policy they dislike.

Here are some of the comments I found on the page:

“I love the story about this those disgusting TSA pigs need a taste of their own putrid medicine. I hope everything goes well I will offer all the support possible. NO PARA-MILITARY a.k.a TSA”

“GOOD JOB!!!! you should have twisted those bad boys right off!!!! show them punk asses a case of trading places… they think this is bad wait till they push us so far into a corner that the only option left for us is to revolt!!!!!!!!!!!”

“THANK YOU, Yukari for standing up to the TSA and for doing what I have always wanted to do!! You are a true hero and you show that resistance ios NOT futile!! I hope everyone will learn from your example and resist the senseless groping. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your courage and bravery!!”

“Thank you Yukari for your courage. You are the modern day Rosa Parks”

“Well, if somebody doesn’t stands up as Yukari did ,the world will be destroyed already… kudos for you!”

“TSA is to the United States as The Gestapo was to Nazi Germany!!”

“I live in Australia and was thinking of vacationing in the US. Until TSA follows the Inquisition and the Stasi into the dumpster of History, I’ll go elsewhere.”

“Keep twisting Yukari-san.”

Perhaps nothing disturbs me more than the comparisons of Miyamae to Rosa Parks and of the TSA to the Gestapo, the Stasi, and the Inquisition.

As for the suggestion that what Miyamae did is somehow equivalent to what the TSA does, that’s preposterous. Whether or not you agree with the actual method, the TSA has been charged with keeping airline flights safe. They’re not scanning/patting people down in order to make them uncomfortable, molest them, or embarrass them. They’re doing it because they’re trying to stop potential terrorists.

Furthermore, last I checked, we don’t do “an eye for an eye” here in America. We don’t rob convicted burglars, we don’t rape convicted rapists, we don’t punch kids that we catch fighting with classmates.

It seems that people have, as usual, fallen victim to black-and-white thinking. To them, the TSA’s screenings are “bad.” Therefore, anyone who resists them in any way must be “good.” Even if that resistance takes the form of an assault on someone’s body.

The supporters of Miyamae, particularly the ones who compare her to Rosa Parks, also seem to neglect the fact that real civil disobedience is powerful precisely because it harms no one. The image of Rosa Parks quietly sitting on the bus and refusing to stand is completely different from that of Miyamae forcefully grabbing and twisting the breast of another woman, a woman who is simply doing her job and trying to make a living.

I read one of the advice columns in this month’s Cosmo. A woman was writing in and asking if it would be okay to wear a top that reveals her tan lines to work, provided the top was modest and work-appropriate. The response was, no, it wouldn’t. Why? Because you wouldn’t want your boss to think that you spend your free time lying around at the beach:

Even though the best of us can fall victim to zebra skin by accident, exposing your sun stripes at work would be flaunting your bad judgement (baking does lead to skin cancer, after all). Perhaps worse, as far as your boss is concerned, it suggests you spend lots of your free time being at one with your beach towel–not exactly impressive.

“Not exactly impressive?” What does that even mean? Apparently, you shouldn’t let your boss know that you actually have fun on your days off. Oh, heavens no! You ought to be at home, catching up on emails.

(As for the skin cancer thing, I’d just like to point out that even if you wear sunscreen, you’re eventually going to get a tan if you spent a lot of time outside. Trust me, my mom slathers my little brother and sister with sunscreen obsessively, yet at the end of the summer they still have those cute little freckles and tan lines.)

Naturally, I immediately thought back to an earlier post I wrote about why adults are always so miserable and try to make me as miserable as they are. Now I’m not surprised. Apparently, once you’re all grown up and have a job, you’re not even allowed to have a good time when you’re off work. No wonder adults are always in such a crappy mood, and no wonder they want to warn me that in a few years I’ll be in a crappy mood too.

What shocks me is that Cosmo isn’t exactly a serious, business-y magazine. It’s mostly read by people who like to enjoy themselves every now and then (or every day/night, as the case may be). If even Cosmo is saying that you can’t have fun once you’re a grown-up (or, at the very least, that you have to do it in secret), what’s the world coming to?

This doesn’t even make sense to me, because I would hope that my boss would want me to come to work refreshed and in a good mood. I would want him/her to know that I’m not going to be asking for time off to go see a therapist about how miserable I am because I never have fun.

(I’m hoping, perhaps in vain, that since I’m going into the mental healthcare field, things will be different for me. After all, if there’s anyone who knows that relaxing and having fun is absolutely necessary, it’s a therapist. In my opinion, therapists should be able to model healthy behavior for their clients. If a client casually asks me what I did over the weekend and I’m forced to either lie or confess that I spent the entire time huddling over my laptop in a corner, crying, and biting my nails off while my husband played with the kids, that’s not good.)

Where did we go wrong? Why is it that in other countries and cultures, it’s perfectly normal to take a nap after lunch before coming back to work? Why is it that the United States is the only country I could find that does not mandate a minimum amount of paid vacation time for all employees? Why is the United States one of the only developed countries that does not offer paid maternity leave (to say nothing of paternity leave)?

One thing that never fails to surprise me about American culture is how fixated it is on work. Russians, for instance, seem to view work mostly as a means to an end (money, security, providing for one’s family), whereas for Americans, it’s an end in itself. I rarely hear my parents talking about work when they’re home, and the only time I’ve seen them doing work-related things at home is when my dad starts maniacally writing some sort of equations on a napkin. My parents don’t have smartphones or tablets. If you send an email to their work address on Friday evening, you won’t receive a response till Monday. And yes, they go to the pool on weekends, and evenings, and any other time they fucking feel like it. That, in my opinion, is how it should be.

I came across a post by Tea Party Nation blogger Dr. Rich Swier called “Bullying, Peer Pressure and Gulf Coast Gives.” (You need a TPN account to see it, unfortunately.) I won’t describe the way in which the contents of my stomach forcibly exited my body upon my reading this, and I will also ignore the homophobia in this article because it’s obvious and there’s no need to comment on it. Rather, I’m going to simply explore an interesting idea that Swier brings up.

In this article, Swier is opposing Gulf Coast Gives, a charity foundation that, among many other things, advocates against LGBT-related bullying. He opposes this foundation because he disagrees with its stance on this issue:

This is not bullying. It is peer pressure and is healthy. There are many bad behaviors such as smoking, under age drinking and drug abuse that are behaviors that cannot be condoned. Homosexuality falls into this category. Homosexuality is simply bad behavior that youth see as such and rightly pressure their peers to stop it…

I agree with Gulf Coast Gives that “LGBT youth are up to five times more likely to attempt suicide than their straight counterparts”. Homosexuality, like drugs, harms young people if they experement with it. That is the greatest tragedy.

Again, I’m going to just ignore the self-evident homophobia and dissect Swier’s concept of bullying as some sort of social regulator. He reframes bullying as “peer pressure” and claims that it prevents young people from engaging in unsafe behaviors, in this case, homosexuality.

Leaving aside for now the fact that, unlike the other behaviors listed here, homosexuality is not a choice, I am left to wonder if Swier somehow managed to completely miss the reasoning behind all the anti-drugs and alcohol campaigns that public school kids are subjected to these days. Peer pressure isn’t typically a force that promotes healthy behavior. If it were, we wouldn’t need all these “just say no” lessons to teach kids how to resist it.

It seems that bullying and peer pressure serve more to encourage “normalcy” than anything else. Luckily for Swier’s argument, heterosexuality happens to be normative. But so are underage drinking and, in some circles, smoking and drug use. People don’t get bullied for doing things that are unsafe; they get bullied for doing things that are “weird.” Contrary to Swier’s argument, kids and teens don’t see homosexuality as “bad behavior.” They see it as weird.

Not only do kids not bully each other for doing things that are actually unsafe, but they frequently bully each other for doing things that most adults would see as positive. I’m sure that even social conservatives would agree with me that reading books is good for kids. Yet every avid reader I know, myself included, was made fun of for it in grade school. To quote the great Bill O’Reilly, you can’t explain that.

Of course, norms change. Homosexuality is becoming increasingly accepted in American society, so it’s only a matter of time before that acceptance starts trickling down to kids and teens and Swier’s argument starts falling apart, like all Tea Party arguments inevitably do.

Just when you thought I was finally done writing about alcohol and partying, here I go with yet another post about it!

Before I start talking about party pop, though, I need to clarify what exactly I’m talking about, because apparently some people still don’t get it. Every once in a while someone who doesn’t know me too well says something like “OMG I READ YOUR BLOG AND I GUESS YOU HATE FUN HAHA.” Um no.

So let me explain. I do not hate alcohol. I do not hate parties. I do not hate fun. I do not hate people who drink and party, except when they’re infringing on my personal space. What I hate is something I call “party culture,” which, by my definition, contains the following components:

the belief, prevalent among people of all ages, that partying is the one and only acceptable way for young people to spend their free time and socialize

the glorification and normalization of binge drinking (formally defined as drinking five or more drinks in a row, but I also use it generally to refer to drinking in a way that jeopardizes one’s health and safety)

the use of alcohol as a means to coerce women and excuse sexual assault

the idea that people who choose not to party are deficient in some way

pressuring people to drink and party (This is truly unique in college. I was never pressured to join clubs, go to football games, explore Chicago, attend dorm events, or do any other social activity quite like I was pressured to party.)

the belief that alcohol is something people “need” in order to relax, talk to people, hook up, have fun, etc.

So there’s party culture for you. As for party pop, I read a piece about it in this summer’s issue of Bitch magazine. The piece was actually a really interesting analysis of the changes that this sort of music has gone through; whereas drunk girls in pop culture used to exist basically as a spectacle for men’s benefit, more recently they seem to be partying for themselves (the article mentions Ke$ha and Katy Perry as examples). Anyway, you’d really have to read the whole article to see all of the points it makes, but that’s the gist of it, and the author sees this as a positive development–female empowerment and blahblah.

However, where the article falls short is that it still seems to present party pop as a symbol of rebellion:

Today’s party-girl pop continues down the avenue of non-explicitly politicized, pleasure-focused rebellion against gender norms carved out by flappers and disco divas.

And:

[Party-girl pop] is valuable in its large-scale reflection of changing the meaning of pleasure and autonomy among young women, both to create a culture for girls themselves and to give older people a peek into these changing mores.

Here’s the thing, though. Whereas the music from which party pop presumably draws inspiration, such as the Beastie Boys’ “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!),” was actually made a time when partying was considered a subversive thing for people (especially women) to do, we’ve come quite a ways since then. Party culture has become normative. It’s not partying, rather than partying, that now draws judgment and scorn. Trust me, I’d know.

The truth is, even my socially conservative parents and their white middle-class friends think that partying is just what the kids do these days. For some reason, though, the party lifestyle continues to hold this impenetrable veneer of revolutionary coolness.

When I listen to music that glorifies party culture and hear people ranting about how rebellious and groundbreaking and cool it is, I imagine someone making music about how awesome it is not to live on a farm or to be able to live past age 50. Like, okay, cool, but I thought we were over that by now.

Maybe what we should be talking about instead is the fact that party pop contributes to a culture in which alcohol is viewed as the one and only means to having a worthwhile and enjoyable life, and partying is seen as something “everyone” does. And I’m not even making random unbased claims here: studies have shown that college students overestimate how much their peers drink, and that the more they think others drink, the more they drink themselves. That’s why, when I went through training to be an RA at Northwestern, we were told to provide our residents with the results of surveys done at NU that showed how much students actually drink. Because when you think that everybody is just constantly going out and knocking back six vodkas in a night, you’re more likely to try to do that, too.

Furthermore, I disagree with the Bitch article’s assertion that party pop is helping to redefine gender roles for women. The line of argument here is that because these women party for their own pleasure, they are paving the way for our culture to accept women as autonomous and equal to men. I don’t think it really works that way, though. I think that now, rather than having one function–pleasing men–women have two functions–pleasing men and getting shitfaced. I don’t see how this helps society recognize the right of women to hold positions of power, contribute to scientific research, control their own reproductive health, or generally do much of anything that doesn’t involve getting intimate with a toilet bowl at the end of the night. (As for the shitshow that consists of male-created party pop, I’m not even going to get into that now.)

The very artists that the author of the article considers pioneers in this regard have other songs (which the author conveniently ignored) that completely contradict the supposedly revolutionary message. For instance, here are some lyrics from a recent song by Katy Perry:

Kiss me, ki-ki-kiss me

Infect me with your love and

Fill me with your poison

Take me, ta-ta-take me

Wanna be a victim

Ready for abduction

That’s empowering, alright. As for Ke$ha:

I don’t care what people say
The rush is worth the price I pay
I get so high when you’re with me
But crash and crave you when you are away

Pardon my skepticism, but I really fail to see how this music is promoting women’s autonomy. What I do see, though, is that it promotes the dangerous party culture that has infected basically every college campus–and JUST A REMINDER, by “party culture” I mean the stuff listed with bullet points above. I’m not saying this music is inherently “bad” or that we shouldn’t listen to it (that would not only be a specious argument, but it would also be a hypocritical one since I listen to a lot of this stuff myself). I do think, though, that we should make a big-ass pause before we start painting it with Beastie Boys-esque shades of rebelliousness.

Pop music, and pop culture in general, is the pulse of our society and its values. I think that if we listen closely to it, we can discern the pressures and expectations that people face from the world around them. And right now, pop music is saying that partying is the epitome of what young people should do with their lives. I think that’s an unfortunately narrow-minded view.

So if you’re too school for cool,
And you’re treated like a fool,
You can choose to let it go
We can always, we can always
Party on our own

I apologize for the complete lack of posts lately; I’ve been busy volunteering and exploring New York City, where I am currently located. However, I’ve decided to crawl out of my Russian-food-and-thincrust-pizza-filled cave in order to comment upon this:

What are we looking at here? Silly-looking men holding cartons of milk? Not so simple. These are a series of new ads released by the Got Milk? advertising campaign. The ads showcase the fact that milk can supposedly help reduce symptoms of premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and feature men making pseudo-sarcastic statements that reference the fact that women are supposedly very moody while on their periods.

The ads point to a website, EverythingIDoIsWrong.com, which is a slick, sardonic guide for men to help placate their bitchy wives and girlfriends during that time of the month. The tagline of the site is, “Your home for PMS management.”

Here are some revealing screencaps from the site, helpfully annotated with my comments:

Attention, men! Because you are from Mars and women are from Venus, you need a special vocabulary to speak with them.

I find this one especially ironic given that women’s concern with their weight has much more to do with societal pressure to be thin than it does with PMS or with making their partners’ lives miserable.

Sorry, men, you’re just going to have to deal with the Evil Women in your life always blaming you for everything.

Because clearly, the only things women care about are gold, silver, and chocolate.

I’ve written about this peculiar menstruation-related misogyny before, except that in my previous post about it, it was being perpetuated by and for women. This ad campaign, on the other hand, targets specifically men and sets up a “yeah bro I know what you’re going through” vibe with its audience.

I won’t repeat what I said in the previous post with regards to the validity of this whole PMS = bitch business, but I will add that these ads rise to a new level of chutzpah, because they somehow manage to turn PMS into a men’s issue. How do they do this, you might ask? After all, it is women, not men, who must deal with the inconvenience of bleeding out of their private parts every month, getting cramps, and feeling fatigued and nauseous. Right?

Wrong! The crappy thing about periods, apparently, is how difficult they make life for men. I mean, duh.

Furthermore, if these fictional men’s concerns do actually contain a semblance of truth in them, maybe it’s time that we recognize the fact that menstruation isn’t to blame here. Rather, the culprits are bad communication skills and a general lack of ability to promote healthy relationships. After all, the relationships hinted at by the men in the ads are anything but functional. Maybe the cure isn’t milk, but a good couples’ therapist.

But of course, it’s much easier to chalk such issues up to women being Complex Demanding Creatures who will never be satisfied by anything their partners do for them, especially not when it’s That Time of Month.

Honestly, this may come as a surprise to you, but most intelligent women find themselves much more pissed off about crap like these ads than about being on their period (or about their partner not taking out the trash/putting the toilet seat down, as the case may be). After all, this is so reductionist. The message to women is, You are your hormones. The message to men is, Deal with her PMS and you’re home free. In the end, advertising campaigns stand to gain from portraying men and women in this way, because the less people understand what really causes conflict in relationships, the more they’ll attempt to buy Stuff to solve all the problems.

And no; just like diamonds, flowers, and chocolate, milk is no panacea.

[Well, now I have two entire posts tagged with “menstruation” on this blog. I’m proud. Also, if you happen to really miss my writing, here’s my short-form blog, which I update much more frequently.]